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Whit Solomon
Whit Solomon, or, more formally, Tien-and-Mycosia Whitacor-Solomon, was born on the planet Lorrd in 863 BBY. He became an infamous pirate by his thirtieth birthday, when he selected the planet R29871, which he called Baehorde, as the world to hold the riches he would spend his life acquiring. This world would become his greatest legacy for hundreds of years after his disappearance in 806 BBY, although the rumors about it varied widely. Early Life Whit's parents, Maric-and-Siella Sarafen-Tien and Puor-and-Chias Meshla-Mycosia, were generally poor throughout their lives, but they were also happy. They had eleven children in all, of whom Whit was the youngest. The second youngest was Whit's favorite brother, Tien-and-Mycosia Brikas-Vett. All of his other siblings married and lived their own lives, and then, when Whit was only five, Tien and Mycosia died inexplicably. From then on, Whit became obsessed with death, and Brikas cared for him until he was old enough to fend for himself. In his youth, Whit began to study death in as much detail as he could find. At nineteen, he began the testing process to become a mortician. When he operated on his first cadaver, though, he realized how distanced that profession was from real death. It examined things that were already dead, when Whit's real concern was the moment of death. He learned what he could from those tests before abandoning them. He sought out crimes in progress, hoping to glimpse the moment of death in another. He witnessed three murders before he came to the conclusion that one had to cause death to understand it. Robbing from the Rich... and Keeping It Whit began observing the citizens in the city around him. He watched the patterns of their lives until he found a man, aged and alone, whom he decided no one would miss. He followed the man to a deserted alley and killed him, choking him to death with his bare hands. But this did not sate his desire to learn. He became more and more careless, his desire for knowledge twisted by his bloodlust, until he was caught by the police - after his sixth murder at the age of twenty-seven. But a group of local pirates were impressed with his handiwork and sprung him from prison, on the condition that he work with them as a hired gun. He would get his share of the cut and all the opportunities for murder that he wanted. Knowing the folly of his actions, he resolved never to fall so completely to his bloodlust again; murder was for the purpose of acquiring knowledge only. The only man Whit ever told about those six murders was his companion Rethe Frettan, whom he swore to secrecy. As far as the Galaxy would be concerned, Whit's first murder was after he signed on with a group of pirates. He began to experiment with methods of murder. He executed thirty-nine sentients, each in a different manner. In six months, he had gone from being a hired gun to leading the entire gang. He robbed sixteen cruise liners, twelve private yachts, and three smuggling vessels between being broken out of prison and his twenty-ninth birthday. In the meantime, he explored dangerous sectors and unknown regions, acquiring extensive maps of areas that the Republic knew little about. A Change of Heart and Hearth Still unsatisfied with what he had learned about death, Whit sought out his older brother, Brik Vett. Brik knew what Whit had done, but ever the loving brother, Brik had forgiven him of every crime. Whit, however, was not interested in forgiveness. He tricked his brother into thinking that he had repented of piracy, luring him onto his vessel, the heavily outfitted Corsair. Once there, Whit imprisoned and tortured his brother for six days before executing him. This was the first time Whit murdered someone unoriginally: he choked the life from Brik, just as he had his very first kill. Because of encroaching law enforcement, Whit took his brother's body and fled his homeworld. He took the corpse to a planet in the Unknown Regions, but still near the Core of the Galaxy; according to Republic records, the official designation of the planet was R29871. Whit had left a sensor probe orbiting the planet, studying the ion storms and their patterns. Arriving in-system, he analyzed the sensor data and determined when he could land and construct his tunnels. He dubbed the planet Baehorde, an Old Corellian word meaning treasure. It was there that he buried his brother and built the base from which he would control his pirates. He began to store his treasure there, and whenever he was pursued, he fled there. His opponents' ships would be damaged or even destroyed by the storms and he would collect their remains. But more than his home changed when he killed his brother. He believed that he truly understood death, then - and he began to fear it. He feared from knowledge what others feared from ignorance. He never tortured nor executed another sentient, and he never killed anyone he thought was unworthy of death. When he killed out of necessity, he offered a prayer to the victim, wishing him well. :"Wander or fade, my fellow life, :And take with you no pain nor strife." :— Whit Solomon Pursuing Immortality His obsession with death also changed in that moment. Accompanying his fear, he no longer sought knowledge of the experience of death, but he sought to avoid partaking of that experience himself. Instead of death, Whit pursued immortality. He began to research ways to achieve such, considering the transferrance of consciousness to a mechanical host, genetic manipulation of his own cells to lead to strength and longevity, and cloning. He ultimately decided on a combination of these elements: he would produce a clone, genetically improved, and imbue it with his own consciousness. But he added a twist: he would produce these clones as embryos and send them periodically throughout the Galaxy with the preconditioned, subconscious desire to return to Baehorde. This desire would manifest itself as dreams and the like, leading the clone to research Solomon and discover his "resting place". Each clone would have one of four aspects of Whit's own personality, which somehow manifested themselves through Whit's lifetime: the pilot, the soldier, the scholar, and the murderer. Several of these would be sent out from Baehorde every few centuries, minimizing the possibility of anyone else realizing that they were clones. Two such clones were Geard Losian, a pilot clone, and Arlan Hale, a soldier clone. Whit knew that he could not achieve this alone. He knew that he had to leave clues for his clones to follow. He charged Simp Wafahi, one of his most loyal hired guns, to write adjusted memoirs about his life of crime. Instead of Baehorde, he would call the world Lytegia, an Old Corellian word for deception, and he would include just enough information to help the clones find R29871, but not so much as to tell the whole Galaxy about its location. With protecting the secret of Baehorde and observing the success of his clones, Whit tasked the one sentient he knew would be around long enough to continue that work: Rethe Frettan. Whit was one of the few sentients in the Galaxy who knew Rethe's identity and yet remained alive. The pirate was never quite sure why the Anzat allowed him to live, but he was glad for it; the hunter was the only one with whom he could be his real self, the true darkness that the clever feared and the foolish admired. But Rethe seemed to enjoy Whit's intellect and presence, so he agreed to help Whit, despite the fact that Whit refused to divulge the details of his plan. Whit continued thieving and robbing from the rich and powerful until he turned fifty-seven in 806 BBY, when he decided it was time for him to die. He retreated to Baehorde, where he continued to establish his base in the expectation of a clone discovering the world. He stored his private vessel, the Freeborn Knave, on the world, filled with the treasures he would want to keep. The overflow he placed in the antechamber of his "tomb". The Corsair he hid elsewhere. Then, when his life became untenable due to age, he had his droids, led by Con-Unit Prime, encase his organs in machinery that would sustain them indefinitely. Legend One of the few legends about Whit Solomon that was true was the number of vessels he boarded; in total, they were four hundred seventy-three. It was also true that he stored the treasures he acquired on a world, which everyone thought was called Lytegia, but there were many other spurious legends to accompany these. One legend declared that Whit had collected enough treasures to construct a moon - another declared that he actually had, simply by placing them all in the same general area of open space. One suggested that he had actually become immortal, perhaps by ingesting a potion, perhaps by the power of a Dark Lord of the Sith, perhaps because he made a deal with a starweird, perhaps because he transferred his mind to a human replica droid, perhaps because he was a human replica droid all along. As time went on, people began to doubt that he had ever existed at all; legend became so commingled with fact that people began to believe that he was just a myth meant to scare children. That had to do, in part, with Rethe's influence. The Anzat was more than happy to spread rumors about sightings of the pirate for as long as his tale remained in common parlance. Eventually, it was only passed around cooling engine coils by superstitious old spacers, and Rethe let it go. Whit had wanted a legend - it was his back-up plan for immortality, he joked - but eventually, as the years passed and none of his clones returned to Baehorde, the old legends faded. Rebirth That changed when Arlan Hale tracked down and found Baehorde. He had not discovered all of the information Whit had intended for him to find, so he did not know why he had come to the strange world, so Con-Unit Prime and the other droids followed their programming: they imprisoned Arlan's friends and forced Arlan to undergo the procedure. The operation merged the minds of the pirate and his clone. This had been intentional on Whit's part; in the case that it took centuries, even millennia, Whit wanted the memories of someone who had lived in modern times, someone who knew the technology and current events, so that he would not be completely lost. This merging process was followed by a brief identity crisis; after what seemed like an eternal struggle to the two minds, Whit emerged as the dominant, controlling personality. Arlan's personality became subservient, dormant, but accessible. Whit quickly took control of the situation on Baehorde - where Arlan had escorted his fellows Eric Noble, Tieradeff "Def" Jaggeron, and Yerrix, and where Rethe had escorted Arlan's old acquaintance Sar'Preyvor, and his companion, Shan Tslav, and finally where members of the Scautus Order had followed Arlan seeking Whit's treasure and knowledge. Whit ordered Rethe to take Eric and Yerrix back to the Wayfarer, the vessel that they and Arlan had traveled to Baehorde in, so that it would not be captured by the Scautus Order. The rest he escorted to the Freeborn Knave, preparing to depart Baehorde. Category:Lorrdians Category:Archangel